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WASHINGTON — As State Department communication officials searched for a sports analogy to
describe the seemingly slow but steady pace of nuclear negotiations with Iran, Marie Harf struck
upon a unique diplomatic phrasing.

“I always quote my favorite Buckeye, Woody Hayes,” the No. 2 State Department spokeswoman
suggested in an email to her boss, Jen Psaki. “All we need is 3 yards and a cloud of dust. In other
words, baby steps that are hard to take, often in the end get you what you want.”

Although Psaki never cited the former Ohio State football coach in news releases, it was typical
of the 32-year-old Harf to blend serious diplomacy with a touch of her home state and favorite
college football team.

Harf, a Granville native who keeps a photograph in her office of her at age 7 wearing an Ohio
State cheerleading outfit, has emerged as one of the two public faces of the State Department.

When Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Sunday in Geneva that Iran had agreed to freeze
progress on its nuclear-weapons program for six months, Harf was there to explain the deal to
reporters from around the world and assist in arranging Kerry’s 5 a.m. news conference. She then
rushed back to the Inter-Continental Hotel as American TV networks conducted taped interviews with
Kerry for the Sunday talk shows.

In Washington, Harf conducts many of the State Department’s televised briefings for reporters.
Standing at the podium, she is serious and deliberate, often resting her hands on her massive
briefing book, which she describes as “more of a security blanket.”

She acknowledges that at times she can be “combative” with reporters, becoming visibly agitated
this year when Matt Lee of the Associated Press kept cutting in, prompting her to reply, “Matt,
come on, can I finish my sentence, please, before you interrupt me?”

Away from the podium, she is affable and outgoing, describing Lee as a “lovely, nice guy” and
making sure to congratulate him on Twitter when he got married.

“It does get a little heated in there sometimes,” Harf said during an interview in her State
Department office. “I don’t want to use the word
showmanship. But there is a performance aspect to it on both sides, quite frankly.

“Our press corps may disagree, but we have tried — especially on national security — to be much
more transparent,” she said. “Do we say everything? No. There are things that we can’t say and
people get angry at us when we can’t. I understand that.”

Described by one of her former college professors as possessing a “critical, analytic mind,”
Harf earned a master’s degree in foreign affairs at the University of Virginia, where she focused
on Saudi Arabia. She had been a spokeswoman for the Central Intelligence Agency and President
Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign before moving to the State Department this year.

In all her jobs, Harf has worked mind-numbing hours. During the final round of Geneva
negotiations last weekend, she grabbed 21/2 hours of sleep on Friday night and then pulled
something of a college all-nighter on Saturday before finally getting to sleep at 7 a.m.
Sunday.

“I come home from these rounds and I sleep for 12 hours straight,” Harf said.

Harf describes herself as a “Buckeye at heart,” saying her father took her to her first home
football game when she was 6 months old. Kara Carscaden, a former Obama campaign co-worker,
characterized her as “intense about” OSU football, prompting Harf’s campaign colleagues to nickname
her “Buckeye.”

During the final week of the 2012 election, Harf’s mother, Jane, once an environmental adviser
to George V. Voinovich when he was Ohio governor, carefully packed home-made Buckeye candies and
sent them to the campaign office. Carscaden said they were “delicious. I wanted to eat all of them,
(but) Marie made us pace them out.”

Harf’s enthusiasm for Ohio State is such that, while in Geneva, she followed text updates from
her parents about last Saturday’s Ohio State-Indiana game. She studied political science at Indiana
University, in part because her parents both earned degrees from there. “Ohio State,” Harf
admitted, “felt too close to home.”

In November 2011, she left the CIA to join Obama’s campaign as a foreign-policy spokeswoman. She
helped Obama prepare for the second of his three debates with GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

At that point, the heated issue was the Sept. 11 attack last year on the U.S. consulate in
Benghazi, where four Americans were killed. When the U.S. Embassy in Cairo initially blamed an
anti-Muslim film for provoking the attack, Romney denounced the statement as “disgraceful.”

To Harf, Romney violated an agreement between the two campaigns not to issue any partisan
attacks on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack in Washington and New York, adding that
she and campaign officials believed that “you don’t get to play politics with the deaths of four
Americans.”

Kevin Madden, a former Romney campaign spokesman, said Harf’s “criticism makes zero sense,”
adding that “the statement sent out was embargoed for Sept. 12 and was part of a response to
multiple inquiries from reporters about events that were unfolding in real time.”

From the campaign, Harf moved to the State Department, saying she “can’t imagine just ever doing
communications that wasn’t wrapped up in this policy.”

“I love it,” she said. “When you find a place you like, it’s OK to just be still for a while and
not think about what comes next.”